Hands and Feet - Dynamite for the Gospel (Acts 1:1-11 & Luke 24:44-53) Ascension Sunday 2021

Hands and Feet – Dynamite for the Gospel

            While Jim and I were visiting the Holy Land back in 2018, we visited an octagonally-shaped chapel devoted to remembering and honoring the event we mark today - the Ascension of Jesus. This event is monumental to our faith as Jesus does exactly what he said he was going to do: dies, rises, and finally, he ascends into heaven.  Yet, the chapel marking this important event – the ascension of Jesus – is tiny.

            Located at the highest point on the Mount of Olives, portions of the chapel date back to the twelfth century after Christ, and it includes in it a rock bearing a footprint – a right footprint, to be precise, said to be the last place where the foot of Jesus touched the earth before he ascended into heaven. (The left footprint was supposedly taken to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the Middle Ages). 

            So important is this event, the Ascension of Jesus, that this chapel is widely regarded as the second holiest site in all of Christendom. And yet, Ascension Day is so often missed – passed over – and ignored in our lives of faith.

            The truth is, unless you went to an Amish farm or  place of business on Thursday and found signs posted on the doors reading, “Closed for Ascension Day”, most of us would never even be aware of the passage of this day that marks the last earthly view the disciples had of our Lord, as he blessed them and was carried away on a cloud. And yet, in both our 1^st reading and Gospel this event is reported by Luke.

            Bewildered, perplexed, perhaps, and utterly amazed, the disciples stood rooted to the spot, staring up into heaven. Jesus has just given them a command and a commission: it was now up to them to proclaim forgiveness of sin in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. As formidable as that sounds, the gospel reports that following the ascension they returned to Jerusalem rejoicing.  

While Jesus tells them that they are to carry on and share the good news of the gospel in all the world, he also tells them that at this moment they need to sit tight – that he’s sending them some help.

Ten days later, on the day we celebrate as Pentecost, indeed that help arrived as the Holy Spirit appeared and baptized them with fire, and gave them all they needed to pursue their call to serve.

They would be sent out to teach, heal, preach and give witness that Jesus Christ is the Messiah and that out of love for all people, he gave his life on the cross for the forgiveness of sin. 

            Being sent for those disciples meant serving a fledgling church in places where at times, they would be persecuted; where they would meet resistance; where their missionary work would begin the spread of what would later come to be called “Christianity” for sake of the kingdom of God, as they traveled far and wide for the rest of their lives. Some of them would literally give their lives for this cause.

            Today, multitudes of Christians like Jim and I and the group we were with, travel to Jerusalem and the Holy Land to visit places like the tiny chapel of the Ascension of Our Lord, and many other places connected to the Scriptures. We had a plan to do the same with a group from Zion this year, but plans were changed by the pandemic. We are hoping to make the trip in 2023.

But the thing is, faithfulness doesn’t require such a pilgrimage or focus upon that far-away land. While it was moving and fascinating for us to be in the place where Jesus walked, and to see the holy sites, the reality is that our deepest experience of Jesus happens as we traverse the mainstream of life. Jesus calls us to live out our faith in our everyday lives; to live out the gospel in whatever communities we find ourselves.

            Jesus of course, taught that holiness lies not in stones or in the structures that are built of them, using human hands – structures which can crumble or be torn down; holiness is not found in buildings or even in footprints where perhaps Jesus himself physically touched the earth. Holiness lies in the gospel message of God’s love shared in community gathered as we are today; shared as the offering of forgiveness to others; shared as we feed the hungry, visit the sick and imprisoned, speak up for the persecuted, and care for the poor.

            Holiness is found in befriending the lonely or the outcast – like those who are bullied, or ostracized or isolated; when sharing acceptance and God’s warmth with those rejected because of the color of their skin or their ethnicity; when praying for or sheltering the ones denied freedom or safety or the ones terrorized by hatred, violence, racism, and ignorance. Holiness is found in the suffering servanthood that risks rejection and reprisal when the status quo is challenged.

            As we celebrate Jesus ascending into heaven today, we join witnesses across the millennia who have not seen Jesus in person, but have found him to be very present in their lives and in the world, through the Scriptures and in the bodies and actions of his followers.

            St. Teresa of Avila, a sixteenth century Carmelite nun and mystic wrote, “Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours.” We are all Jesus’ hands and feet, from the youngest of us to the oldest and everywhere in between.

We here at Zion are called and commissioned to become as vital to the mission of God as any chapel or holy site in Jerusalem. What if we took a close look at ourselves and saw what Christ sees – beloved sisters and brothers called and sent to bring comfort and healing and forgiveness to those who are hurting?

            The mission is not always easy; the original Greek words in this passage include those that form the basis for English words such as “martyr” and “dynamite.” God’s love is explosive. God’s inclusivity blasts apart the human tendencies to hoard power, wealth, and status and to enslave the poor in the poverty and the weak in their helplessness. It is not always welcomed. It is often rejected, sometimes violently so. Jesus’ awesome message is dynamite to worldly greed, corruption, and sin that are tenacious and will strongly resist God’s Good Word.

            Yet, the message of Jesus Christ is for people of every time and place. While we celebrate this day as the time when our Lord and Savior “ascended into heaven where he sits at the right hand of God,” as we recite in our creeds, Ascension Day and these texts are even more about our being sent out, as disciples of Christ, into all the ends of the earth. That translates easily as ‘everywhere we go.” Everywhere? Yes, everywhere: home, work, school, playground, the beach, the mountains, the store, gym or soccer field.

            Next week we will celebrate Pentecost Sunday and the empowerment given to the church by the Holy Spirit. On that day we will confer the Rite of Confirmation on two of our young people as they Affirm their Baptism, and we will remember that at our Baptism we each, too, received the Holy Spirit, and it is that Spirit who enlivens our church and sends us out in mission with the power of dynamite to share the gospel truth of forgiveness, love and peace known through Jesus Christ.

            We are Christ’s body. We are empowered, inspired, strengthened, and sent into the world by the Holy Spirit, the power of Christ among us.  

We are blessed by God to carry this gift into every place we travel, to share the message of God’s grace, and to give it to all with whom we interact, to bless others through the healing love of Christ, the restorative compassion and vibrant embrace of the Holy Spirit, whether this takes place in acts of worship and praise inviting others to join in, through meals distributed to the hungry, or assistance extended to those needing shelter, or acts of authentic caring, prayer, and engagement with our neighbor.

The two men dressed in white robes urged those who stood speechless, gazing up toward heaven, to get moving, to get to work, to believe and know that Christ would be with them through a different kind of power they had never before experienced.

The message is the same for us. The living Jesus comes to us in the same way – it is present wherever the church pours itself out for others. This is our call to follow the Lord of all. May we each be empowered through open minds and enlightened hearts to follow our Lord Jesus with hands and feet, hearts and minds, all devoted to embodying his love for the world. Amen.